Thanks for making this AP, lots of good things to think about!

It would be good to include a description of "what is Celtic Burn" for those who are not familiar.

Children prices- I wasn't aware that there had been a decision about whether to have children at the event after last year's concerns. Did I just miss that?

Extra Build and strike days. Build day yes, sounds good. I'm not in favour of the strike day I think it would just leave a small number of people doing all the clear up and that doesn't sound like fun.

@Rachel Liberty  Regarding the website: Yes, I definitely imagine that the website will have other pages with more general information about CB (which won't be written by me). My proposal here is only for what the content of a page on memberships could look like.

Am in favor of one extra build day because build is my favorite part of burns, and commit on being there. Not sure about the extra strike day, Rachel's concern is very valid, and with having to travel back to a different country and needing to take time to decompress etc I am not ready to fully commit to that one.

also interested whether there was a discussion about children!

Thanks Rachel and Rin! Your question, Rachel, points to the different things we can mean when we say "take decisions" and the different ways that can happen in our community, which I think is always a good thing to get a little clearer between us, so I appreciate that opportunity :-)

Two types of things have been decided so far and have informed what I've written down here: 

a) "big" community-affecting decisions that were taken here on Loomio - the one relevant here is the decision about the dates and existing site booking 

b) any smaller decisions not taken to Loomio, where someonehas identified a task and a team of realizers has taken it on (-> Wrike was chosen by a group of "Techies" suggesting and testing different alternative platforms, and -> there is a group working on a website and making decisions about that between them) 

Apart from the above, everything else I've written here around memberships is a proposal,

i.e. no one has so far (before this AP) initiated a decision on any of those other aspects, which means these are currently all at the discussion, looking-for-input, stage (so yes, that would include the question about children). 

Please imagine each of my points followed by the question "What do you think, shall we do it like this? Or if not, how?"

I will make a few sperate comments here:

1) Yes to build day, strike may need to be given more thought and I agree with above as to why. Personally I would be aiming to stay an extra night either side in my van anyway.

2) I'm not sure the membership process sounds as straight forward as it could be. I don't think I'm clear on how that will work, from details to payment. Would the person signing up fill in their details and then be assigned someone to help them access Wrike to find the bank details and then make payment? I don't think people will respond to that the way they are intended to.

I would propose bank details for payment are sent as a secure email and that an intro to platforms (Loomio, Telegram and Wrike) are part of a "membership validation process". This would mean (probably reception creatures) being responsible for validating memberships.

It could be worded "Once you have registered yourself for membership here, you will receive an email to inform you of how to make your membership payment via bank transfer. Reception creatures will also assist in validating your membership which involves registering for our community organisation platforms so that you are able to participate" Or something similar.

3) CHILDREN. Whilst I understand that other burns are inclusive of minors, I do not believe that means CB needs to be. I question CB's capacity for adequate safeguarding as it currently stands. The demand for child memberships is not very high in spite of many being parents; most parents do not want to bring their children to the burn. With the best will in the world, it seems efforts to include minors have been poorly executed and lack something of a "reality check" in terms of how this event might be perceived and the potential repercussions.

We do not have trained designated safeguarding leads. We do not yet have designated family areas (nor in my opinion the capacity to implement them properly whilst still allowing people some freedom). We do not agree about the ideology of creating seperate family areas/adult only areas. We do not agree about who takes responsibility for ensuring the safeguarding of children. It should be clear that it is inadequate to allocate that responsibility to their guardian only.

So I propose that Celtic Burn makes the RADICAL move to trial itself as an over-18s only event. The burn community are free to host any number of burn adjacent family-friendly get togethers, or attend other burns with family provision.

Hey @Madeleine, this is a radical proposal, it's a big change to the essence of the burn. I appreciate that you care about child safeguarding and are bringing this to light at Celtic Burn (CB), it sounds like you have lots of experience.

I hear you saying that if we can't meet basic child safeguarding standards then the burn shouldn't go ahead with children. I think it would be more helpful for the tone to be - What safeguarding measures can we put in place to make this the best burn experience for everyone.

A lot of work has gone into making CB what it has become, a friendly welcoming inclusive community. The decentralised way in which we work makes more of an approach of distributing the responsibility and everyone caring for each other rather than volunteer leads taking large amounts of responsibility. From Celtic Burn has come a beautiful community that exists year round in Scotland.

My biggest reasons for saying "What safeguarding measures can we put in place", instead of "let's trial CB as an over-18s only event" is that CB is Scotlands 'main' burn, the burn that the community pivots around. This is the burn that I think should stay as inclusive as possible and be the example to welcome new people into the community.

I have two children and have taken them to many burns. It's not easy. In fact it's really hard because of the extra responsibility I have, compared to being there alone, but the amount of support and gratitude I've received for bringing my children, being celebrated for being a parent and getting to share my community with my children makes it all worth while.

Hi @Madeleine  I want to respond to your point 2) about the payment details, as I agree that's not as clear as it could be in my proposal (thanks for that prompt :-) ) The current plan is that members fill in a Google form with their details, and the payment details are at the end of that form. The link to the form will be in Wrike, but also in Loomio - meaning that new members do not need to be assigned someone to invite them to Wrike in order to get their membership. It's just a sign-up link for Loomio, which they can follow themselves in the moment and go ahead with the process.

I do get the concern that we don't want to put up too much of a barrier to people buying their membership, by, for example, putting the entire membership sale process only inside of Loomio (as was actually the case for a previous CB!).

I want to stress that this proposal I've written here already integrates various rounds of feedback I've received in person and on Telegram. The proposal has changed to having all the information that you can see here publicly on the website (not "hidden away" somewhere), and also to only requesting, but not requiring people to sign up for Wrike at the point of getting the membership.

I'm sharing all this because i would like you (and others who have this concern) to see the work that I've already put into integrating various different principles here (inclusion, decentralisation/participation, communal effort).

We're already trying to minimise the number of individual emails to be sent out by Reception Creatures (or anyone), and my concern about an additional membership validation step is that that would create a lot of extra emailing work x130...

I'm wondering if what I've explained above about the form and Loomio makes it clearer for you? xx

@Isabelle That is clearer, Isa, thanks.

I'd like to reframe my "proposal" to trial without under 18s to be more aligned with what I actually mean since it's clearly been too contentious of a topic.

Just because I prefer the simplicity of adult only events, and do certainly require at least some adult-only space to relax, I also recognise that to be adult-only is not aligned with the initial hopes for Celtic Burn.

Please interpret my input as simply a wish not to sell child-memberships/accompanying adult memberships without incorporating additional important info about what level of responsibility any accompanying adults must consciously take, and our safeguarding plan, as it emerges.

Thanks 🙏

The BUILD plan summarised:

People(1) arrive AND build the preplanned communal spaces(2) on Sunday. Sleeping places are the campground, no barns rental(3). First morning meeting and "official" opening of the burn is Monday morning (11:11).

1)Anyone who wants, but we do ask that they pre-register their intention to arrive on Sunday (as opposed to Monday) so that we have an idea if it looks to be a lot of people (i.e. more than 30), which I deem unlikely. But even if that does happen we'll easily deal with it ^^

2)Three rented cosy yurts + free roundhouse dancefloor ^^

3)Though realistically speaking these are highly unlikely to be booked by anyone else on Sunday, as it's between two events, and Pam is generally holding the day for us; so we could have a chat with her about creating our arts gallery or gate art or whatever in the Nith barn lounge anyway (as another freebie), and I'm optimistic about getting access to the kitchen building as well; but we can see about that; these are all small details which don't need to be pinned down within this initial proposal.